


Our Weapons are Words

by Chthonia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: "I can show you the ways of the Force", (You don't need to have read that though), Angst, F/M, Family Drama, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, POV Kylo Ren, References to Bloodline, Rey is taking no sh-t, Snark, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chthonia/pseuds/Chthonia
Summary: After the battle on Starkiller, Kylo Ren wakes to find himself imprisoned by Leia and Rey.This is not failure.This is opportunity.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta-readers [SophiaDreith](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaDreith) for fannish chat and good advice (please forgive me for not taking it all) and my RL friend S, who has put up with this little obsession of mine far beyond what I'd have any right to hope for. :)
> 
> And thank-you also to the Reylo Big Bang mods - sadly the fest seems to have fizzled, but I wouldn't have written this without it.
> 
> A warning: This is not redeemed Kylo. This is not regretful Kylo. This is post-Starkiller Kylo hanging tight onto his darkside identity. Hanging out in his head may occasionally be uncomfortable.

  


Everything hurt.

The pain came in waves.

He rode them back to oblivion.

.

.

He drifted into awareness.

He risked a glance.

Black became grey. A ceiling spun.

Fire sliced across his face; a numbing flood rose to meet it.

.

.

The waves were soothing now. He felt… nothing.

An engine roared.

Which didn't make sense. The medbay was nowhere near the hangar.

He floated on the lack of pain.

Another X-wing rumbled in the distance; he clung to the familiar sound until it was gone.

_X-wing?_

He opened his eyes, fighting back the dizziness. The spinning ceiling slowed.

It was grey duracrete, not metal.

He was not in a medbay.

And this was not a First Order ship.

A flare of panic gave him the strength to sit up. But he couldn't. He was tethered to his bed and when he reached out with the Force to break the bonds… nothing. He couldn't feel _anything_ except nausea and fatigue.

He slumped back. So _tired…_ He had burned himself out, fighting the cold, fighting the loss of blood, fighting _her_ … even trying to sit up was too much and he was still too weak to fight it.

His master would not be pleased with this.

He couldn't bring himself to care.

He let the waves take him.

.

.

A mechanical squeal cut through the fog. Looming over him was a medical droid, wielding a syringe.

Were they trying to kill him, then? That thing had been obsolete even before he was born.

He glared at the droid. Normally it would have only taken a thought to fling it across the room, but he couldn't stop it and he hated, _hated_ feeling so helpless.

And for a moment he could feel everything - the afterthrob of the saber burns, the dulled spike of the bowcaster wound, the bacta patch tight on his face, the intense ache in his jaw. He dove into the pain, drinking it in - and suddenly he could sense people bustling about outside, too faint and far to identify except for two, too bright and too familiar-

And then the droid's needle slid into his arm and he was locked in his own head as the numbness spread.

So.

 _They_ had made him weak. It was their drugs, not overuse of the dark side, that kept him from the Force. He could deal with that… but the waves of nothingness were lapping at his head now, and all he could do was observe the spread of it as the cleansing pain was submerged once more. 

.

.

Next time the droid came, he was ready for it.

He clenched his stomach, letting the pain shooting through the bowcaster wound clear his mind. He could not halt the droids advance, not yet. But he had more control over his own body now, and this time he could feel the cold rush as the drug entered his blood, could counter its deadening effect.

Almost.

He could feel how it acted on him, at least, and neutralize it to some extent: this time, it had not overwhelmed him.

 _Unless_ , he thought as the door opened, _it had not been intended to_.

The light outside was artificial, but bright enough to throw the two figures into silhouette. He didn't need to see their faces, though. Even with the drug fogging his senses, he _knew._

The girl. And the woman he had learned to call the General.

She stepped forward, the harsh overhead light throwing shadows across her face.

He… should have felt more of a sense of recognition, surely?

It was not the lined skin and grey hair that was surprising; he'd seen the holovids, after all. No, it was his inability to see beyond her face: he'd always known exactly what she was feeling. 

How could he have forgotten that?

There was a part of him that wanted to feel it still, that ached for the certainty of _knowing_.

He couldn't afford that. The only thing that mattered was that she was his enemy, a General of the Resistance. 'Mother' was too close to the hole he'd ripped out of himself.

She stood above the bed, a frown twisting her face. Blinking.

It was like what that idiot pilot had said: _You talk first? I talk first?_

 _You talk first_ , he decided. Let her show how she intended to play this.

She said nothing.

He looked past her. They'd cleaned up the scavenger girl, found her some fitted grey tunic to wear instead of the desert rags, but her hate still burned in her eyes. _Rey_ , the traitor had called her. And this was _all her fault._ If she had shown him the map, if she hadn't fought him in the forest, if she had _listened…_ But no. Instead she'd dragged him back _here_ of all places.

He let his eyes lose focus as if he were slipping back into the drug-filled sea.

His- the General reached out. Such a familiar gesture… a cool hand, a boy's flushed face. Back before she'd sent the boy away.

Their eyes met. Her hand fell to her side. She blinked again. Then suddenly she turned away and strode from the room, the scavenger scurrying ahead of her.

His eyes narrowed as he watched them leave. 

He could still salvage something from this.


	2. Chapter 2

_Leave here with me. Come home._

I want to be free. Will you help me?

A man falls to the darkness. A world explodes.

.

He jolted awake, blinking at the light. It told him nothing: it was always light here. All the better for them to spy on him.

_Take off that mask. You don't need it._

But he did. Now more than ever.

The thin mattress was drenched in sweat. He rolled onto his side.

He could move! His hands were no longer clamped to the bed, but locked in front of him in battered binders. He sat up; his head spun. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing away the dizziness. A chain hung heavy between the binders and a bolt on the wall: too short to reach the door, but long enough to reach the fresher opposite the bed.

Which, he realised, he really needed to use.

He swung his feet to the floor, and stared for a moment at the loose brown trousers covering his legs, and the too-short sleeves of the shapeless shirt. It was disorienting, not seeing his usual black robes. Or maybe that was just the drugs. He didn't feel himself without his tight tunic and belt, or the heavy boots that kept him anchored.

_When had they taken his clothes?_ It was lost in the fog. He shouldn't care - thinking about it was wasted effort. He was their prisoner; they'd want to make him feel powerless, and even if they didn't, his lack of being dead meant they must have dressed his wounds.

But it wasn't so much when they'd done it that bothered him, he realized, but who. Had the General stood over him when he was drugged senseless?

Had she…?

Had… _she?_

No. Just the thought made something inside him curl up in shame. A familiar anger rose to burn it away.

_Kriff,_ he needed the fresher.

He stood up, the bacta patches tugging on his skin as he stumbled across the room. The duracrete was cold under his bare feet, but after Starkiller it barely registered. 

He fumbled with the trousers. It really wasn't easy to take a piss in binders.

They'd be loving this, if they were watching now. They'd stripped him and chained him up like a kriffing animal. He would make them pay for that.

He almost tripped over the bowl on the floor. He sat on the bed and lifted it. Sniffed at the brown sludge inside. It was stew: cold and thin and made from something barely edible. Resistance cuisine at its finest.

Not that he had much choice.

He held the bowl in his fettered hands and managed to gulp it down, which wasn't easy with the bacta patch numbing half his face. He wiped his chin and warily prodded the patch. She'd slashed up his cheek to his forehead; he was lucky not to have lost an eye. He shuddered at the memory: the blue fire; the sick realisation that he couldn't stop it; the agony splitting his face; her feral snarl as she prepared to finish him off.

Part of him would have preferred it if she had. The clanking chain and the binders were an insult: he should have been able to snap them open with a thought but he couldn't and it _infuriated_ him. He'd always hated being trapped.

But he wasn't cut off from the Force completely - he had sensed people outside this room, after all.

He forced himself to relax, trusting his simmering rage to keep his mind above the drugs lapping at his mind. He pushed his thoughts back to a memory of before, of a woman with braided hair and a white dress splattered with purple going on and on and on about how he should _control_ the movement of the fruit instead of flinging it on instinct. It had taken his seven-year-old self a long time to see the point.

But he had learned: had learned to gauge his own strength and how to feel out an object's structure and weight and centre of gravity. It had become instinct, something he had not had to consciously think about for years. Now, the drug had robbed him of that instinct and working without it was like learning to read all over again.

The binder latches were mechanical; he could tell that much. Opening them would require more force, more precisely angled, than merely breaking a maglock circuit. He tried to jiggle the tumblers, to feel their weight and how they might be persuaded to move, but he couldn't grasp the surface of them.

He felt the frustration rise. He seized it, let it grow, focused it on the stubborn lock. And for a moment he could _see_ the shape of the locking pins he needed to move-

And then he heard the electronic beep of a different lock. The cell door opened.

This time, the older of the two women was every inch the General: her stride confident, her gaze direct. The scavenger followed, head held high and not a hair out of place. He was acutely aware of his bare feet, the shapeless rags they'd put him in.

No. Whatever they tried to dress him as, he was _Kylo Ren_ : Master of the Knights of Ren, right hand of Supreme Leader Snoke, strong in the dark side of the Force. 

He stood up, managing not to sway. His height was one thing they couldn't take from him.

The General stopped. "Ben?"

He curled his lip. So that was her game.

She frowned. "What did they _do_ to you?"

Her voice was almost steady but her distress pulsed in the Force. And that was the problem with the Jedi and those who followed them: they tried so hard to suppress their emotions that they ended up fighting themselves. 

"They showed me how to be strong," he told her.

"Is that what you call it?"

But he _was_ stronger than her - while she wasted energy trying to hide her anger and longing for something he couldn't quite grasp, his own anger and longing for freedom was rising in him, cutting through the lulling drug, ready to be unleashed…

Not yet.

The scavenger frowned. The General's gaze didn't waver.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

_The face of my son._

He shook away the memory. Han Solo and Leia Organa's expectations of their son had been matched only by their neglect. They had no claim on the man that boy had become.

"Where's Snoke?"

He blinked, then laughed. "I couldn't tell you that even if I wanted to."

"You're defending him? After what he did to the Hosnian System?" She pressed her lips together. "Or -or was that you?"

He looked away. He didn’t want to talk about that, especially not with her. He remembered, once, looking up at her face when she'd told him about the destruction of Alderaan. But he had never understood until he'd had to stand on the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , blocking out a billion screams and pretending nothing was wrong.

The scavenger girl was watching him intently, as if she could see his thoughts. But she couldn't, he knew she couldn't - and even if she could, she could never understand.

He needed to sit down. He couldn't sit down. He shouldn't have stood up.

He let the fog blur the memory. But it wasn't as if his mother's side was innocent.

He met her stare. "And how many people did you kill on Starkiller Base?"

"You can't pretend that's the same!"

"It hardly makes a difference to the dead, does it?"

She took a breath, held it, exhaled. "Was Snoke with you on Starkiller?"

Did she really expect him to betray his master?

"Are you asking whether you killed him? You must know the answer to that is no."

"So where is he?"

"I already told you: I have no idea."

She watched him for several long seconds, then turned to the scavenger. "Is he lying?"

He sneered. "Why are you asking _her_?"

"Why not?" said the General. "She read the truth from you before."

_You're afraid…_

"No, she did not." He could feel the anger ready to spill over; he channelled it into a glare that he directed at the scavenger. "All you did was ride in on the connection _I_ made. If you really think that means you can spy on me any time you want, then feel free to try. Be my _guest_."

She flinched, but glared back. "What makes you think I'd want to be within ten parsecs of your mind?" She wrapped her arms around herself. "I don’t want anything to do with you."

"And yet," he said, "you brought me here."

"You'd rather I'd have left you there to die?"

"No." He thought of darkness and swirling snow and red and blue fire sparking at the edge of a crevasse, and looked clear into her eyes. "You know that isn't want I wanted."

His mother touched his arm. "Ben…"

" _Don't_ call me that!" he snarled. "Ben is long gone."

"No. Ben is- _You're_ still there. I can feel it."

"Oh, of course you can," he said. "You always did think you knew me better than I knew myself. Well, you were wrong then and you're wrong now."

"No." She blinked, and blinked, and shook her head. "I never thought that."

"Really?" he said. "You said I'd enjoy going with you to Coruscant, so that everyone could point at me and tell me how much I'd have to do to live up to my _heroic_ parents. You said I'd be happier training with Luke than staying at home with my friends. And then you thought I'd be happier if you just left me there and never came to visit."

_Come home with me. We miss you_. The old man had said it on the bridge. Ten years too late.

And he almost smiled, as he realized.

"It was you, wasn't it?" he said. "You had your fantasy son; you convinced yourself he was real. And then you sent your husband to his death trying to prove it."

She paled. "How can you say that?"

"Because it's true. Do you really think the galaxy's greatest cynic was stupid enough to think that one plea from a parent who'd ignored me for years would make me turn my back on everything I'd built? He might still be alive if it hadn't been for you."

She stared at him. He'd hit his mark; maybe he could still read her after all.

"You-" Her voice quivered. "That's not my son talking."

"So you've finally worked that out."

The General shook her head and turned to the door. The girl gave him a venomous glare and followed.

He stood tall and watched them go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank-you so much for the comments - it means the world to know that people enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it, even with Kylo being a bit of a git. ;)
> 
> * * *

  


He lay under the thin blanket as he worked on the binders. If the Resistance were watching, and he was starting to doubt that, all they'd see would be a prisoner drugged comatose.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too far from the truth. After the General's last visit, the ancient medical droid had returned and demonstrated that its age had made it not decrepit but rather all too practiced at sedating 'patients' who had no wish to be sedated. When he'd woken up, it was all he could do to stagger to the fresher. It was only the pain of banging his leg against the bed that had given him the clarity to claw his way out of the swamp.

And now, although he was sure he had the measure of the binder mechanism, he still couldn't budge any part of it. If he pushed back the drug enough to align the pins, he couldn't lift the latch. When he grasped at the latch the pins slipped back into place. And when he tried to hold both the pins and the latch, the drug rushed in to submerge him.

He was pulling himself free of it when the keypad beeped. He let his muscles go slack and watched the door slide open to admit… the girl. Alone.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time his mother had found more urgent business elsewhere.

He didn't get up. She'd tried to kill him twice before; perhaps if he appeared to be weak she'd lower her guard and actually listen to him.

He let his words slur slightly. "Hello, Rey."

She startled. "What?"

"Isn't that your name?"

She took a step closer, still well outside the range of his chain. He waited for her to speak, but she didn't. Well, she had called him a monster. Perhaps she just wanted a closer look at what she thought she'd caged.

She was here, though. That had to count for something.

He propped himself on his elbow. "You should have come with me," he said. "There's nothing for you here."

"No thanks. I didn't think much of your hospitality before."

She was watching him with the same hard stare as when she'd stalked him in the snow, as if she could dissect him with her gaze alone.

"You're curious, though," he said. "What do you want to know?"

"Can't you read my mind?"

He forced a laugh. "With these drugs? From across the room? What do you think?"

She took another step towards him. "I thought you could take anything you want."

He felt a flare of anger at hearing his words used against him. And then he could feel… something. The shape of whatever she wanted from him. He tried to see it more clearly, but it was gone.

Maybe she didn't know herself.

"There is so much I could show you, Rey," he said. "You can't pretend you're not even a little interested. You wouldn't have brought me with you if you weren't."

"That was nothing to do with…" She folded her arms. "Han Solo was willing to _die_ because he wanted you back here, though R'iia knows why. I couldn't just-"

The keypad beeped; the General strode into the room.

She looked from him to the girl. "You shouldn't have come here alone," she said. "It's not safe."

"Really?" he said. "What do you think I'm going to do?"

"I've seen what you do."

He sat up. "So what happens now, _mother?_ Are you going to interrogate me?"

She froze. "How can you think that?"

He shrugged. "No one else knows I'm here, do they?"

It made sense that they'd keep the weak-minded away. But in the brief glimpses he'd had of the people beyond the room, not one had shown the slightest interest in what was in it. Anything could happen in here, and no one would know.

The girl scowled at him. "You'd be dead already if they did," she said. "Don't you get that she's trying to protect you?"

"Don't be so naïve." He looked at the General. She could be ruthless, he knew, but nothing she could do would match what Snoke had put him through. "You won't get anything from me," he said to her. "I've been to places you can't even imagine."

She crouched down so their eyes were level.

"Just talk to me, Ben," she said. "Whatever you think I did, it isn't worth this."

Ben again. Ben had been real, the last time she'd faced him like this. That was before she'd sent him away. Before the truth of their heritage had sent shockwaves through the galaxy. Before she'd sent that tearful holo to try to justify her lies and he'd spent so many sleepless nights numb to everything as he thought through what it all meant.

"Were you ever going to tell me the truth?" he asked.

She sighed, and glanced at the girl. "You don’t need to hear this."

But the girl shook her head. "I won't leave you alone. Not when you said it wasn't safe." But she was lying too; he could see how she watched him. It wasn't some twisted sense of duty to the General or to Han kriffing Solo that was keeping her here, but her own curiosity.

Good. She might even listen.

He looked at the woman crouching in front of him, a woman who claimed to know him just because she had seen him as a child. But either she hadn't seen him at all, or she'd been trying to manipulate him just as she manipulated everyone else.

She moved to sit at the end of the bed, and put on her 'earnest and honest' face. "Of course I wanted to tell you," she said. "It was just hard to find the right time… we thought it would be easier for you not to grow up with that hanging over you."

"Easier."

He realized that he actually wanted to hear what she had to say. He'd spent most of his life resisting the call of the dark, wondering what was wrong with him that it tugged on him so insistently. The truth had set him free to embrace his heritage, and now it was the treacherous pull of the light he knew he had to resist. Perhaps understanding how she justified herself would help him to do so.

She looked down at her hands. "I told you, I was horrified when it came out in public the way it did. Not for me, for you. I didn't even know where you were at the time…"

"It was a _relief._ " He waited until she looked up, eyes wide with shock. "All I'd ever heard was how our whole family had fought against the dark side. All my life I'd been told I had to live up to that, but of course I never could. _Because it was all lies._ "

"No." She ran a hand through her hair. "Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi. He fought in the Clone Wars. And he came back to the light in the end. Luke was there; he must have told you."

"Luke believes what he wants to believe. But it's not true. Darth Vader killed the Emperor because he didn't want the Emperor to kill Luke. Because he wanted Luke to follow him. And Luke was too weak to do it - but I will."

"How can you say that?" She was pale, almost shaking. "I _met_ Vader! And no, I never told you the details because I knew one day I'd tell you who he really was. But he… he tortured me, Ben. He stood and watched as I screamed and screamed and he only stopped because he knew it would be worse when it started again. And then he made me watch as they destroyed my home planet and everyone on it. How can you possibly admire that?"

He shook his head. "You're lying."

"What? Of course I'm not lying! How can you say that?"

"You are lying." He leaned towards her. "The dark side calls to you, doesn't it? You just won't admit that you're too afraid to use it. And so you made me suppress it too, even though you knew exactly what I was going through."

"No." Her voice trembled. "You're sick, Ben. Snoke twisted your mind and it's the biggest regret of my life that I didn't see it earlier. But you're here now. We can fix this."

"You're deluded. There is no Ben."

She stood up. "I will not give up on you now." She touched his forehead and looked into his eyes, desperately projecting a sincerity that he could _feel_ she believed in.

He sat motionless, staring at the door long after she had gone.

It had been a long time since anyone had touched him. Anyone who cared about him.

But Leia Organa didn't care about _him_. She cared about her lost fantasy of what she'd wanted her son to become. And she was willing to destroy him to get it back.

Han Solo had touched him too. But he'd already been dead then, with nothing left to want.

Because he'd killed him.

He'd needed to kill him. 

But killing Han was supposed to end his conflict, to prove once and for all that he was dedicated to the dark side and the light could just kriff off. But it hadn't - he could still feel it trying to worm its way in. All he had done was ensure that he could never come back, regardless of the General thinking she could bend reality to her will.

Not that he'd ever want to: there had never been anything for him in her world, and there certainly wasn't now. He would not let her deny who he was. What he had become. What he had made himself.

He pulled the familiar resentment around him like a cloak and turned his attention to the binders. He would _not_ let his mother and her desert pet keep him from his destiny.


	4. Chapter 4

_You're afraid._

A hand on his shoulder. He can't see. He can't move.

_Monster. Creature in a mask._

The hand moves to his neck, fumbles with a catch. He can't stop her as she pulls away the mask and exposes him to the light.

_I can take whatever I want._

She puts her hand on his forehead. He glares at her but he's bound to the interrogation rig with durasteel restraints and there's nothing he can do to stop her.

_You will never be as strong…_

He can't keep her out. He doesn't want to keep her out. He needs to keep her out. His head starts to hurt. And he realizes that _this isn't how it happened._

.

He jerked awake. She jerked her hand away.

They stared at each other.

There was dirt under her nails. The lines in her hands were etched in black. She smelled of grease and oil.

She stumbled back.

"So you're a mechanic now?" he asked. Because he could have railed at her about whatever the _kriff_ she thought she was doing but the part of the dream where she had him at her mercy wasn't entirely false.

"That's what I do," she said. "I fix things."

"Did the General send you to fix me?"

"What? No!"

"She doesn't know you're here, does she?"

She shrugged. "Why are you so awful to her? I'd give anything to talk to my mother."

"You'd probably be disappointed."

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't get you. Don't you care about anything?"

So she hadn't been listening after all. "Why does it matter to you?" He raised his hands, clinking the chain. "Don't you just see me as a monster you can lock up and chain to a wall?"

"I thought you wanted to be seen as a monster. Isn't that sort of the point of wearing a black cloak and a mask and stomping around trying to scare people?"

"I never tried to scare you."

"Really?" She crossed her arms. "So you weren't trying to scare me when you held a lightsaber to my neck? Or when I woke up in your torture room looking at that creepy mask?"

He sighed. "You had information I needed. It wasn't personal. I did my best not to hurt you."

"So that makes it okay?" Her voice rose. "Well, you should have tried harder. Because it did hurt; it _really kriffing_ hurt. And still I'd rather have had it hurt ten times more and not had you rooting around _inside my head_."

"Perhaps you should have just told me what I wanted to know, then."

She glared at him again, her cheeks flushed. He was actually starting to enjoy this.

He rolled onto his side, trying to look nonchalant despite his bound wrists. "What's this about, Rey? Sneaking in here when no-one's looking to poke the monster with a stick and see what reaction you'll get? Or were you seriously trying to read my mind?" He lowered his voice. "Do you want me to show you how?"

"You're insane." She shook her head. "I could never learn anything from you!"

He smiled. "Ah, but you already have. Do you really think you'd have been able to manipulate that guard if I hadn't shown you how to project your mind? Or learned how to connect with a lightsaber if I hadn't pushed you to do it?"

"So you were trying to kill me for my benefit, is that it?"

"Did you really think I was trying to kill you?"

She stared at him. "Slashing at me with a lightsaber, after killing Han and almost killing Finn? Trying to cut off my feet? Almost pushing me off a cliff? Yeah, I'd say you were trying to kill me."

"You missed the part where I didn't actually do it. If I'd wanted to, you'd be dead." His eyes met hers. She looked away.

"Should I be flattered?" she asked. "You don't seem to care whether you kill anyone else."

He needed her to understand. "I can help you. You-"

"I don’t need your help!"

"You're strong in the Force. You've been alone all your life, with no one to help you understand it. I know what that's like. I can show you."

She rounded on him, incredulous. "You! You're unbelievable! So you're lonely, is that it? Maybe you should have thought about that before you murdered all the other Jedi!"

She jabbed her finger in his face. He grabbed her wrist.

She froze. _"Let go of my hand."_

He pulled her towards him. "Why are you even here, Rey? You could have just dumped me here and flown off to look for Luke. You could have left me bleeding out on Starkiller. You make it abundantly clear that you hate me, but you can't stay away."

"Let go of me!" She tried to twist away, but he held her easily.

"You want to know about me? What makes me what I am? So look! I've already shown you how!"

"You kriffing crinking piece of kark!"

Good. She was getting angry enough to draw on the Force. And this time he was ready for her.

"Let me _go!"_

He tightened his grip. "Make me."

And _kark kark **KARK**_ he doubled up in agony as she hit him right in the most painful place imaginable.

The door slammed shut.

_Damn and hell and sithspit!_

He tore the binders from his wrists and curled himself around the pain.

That kriffing _harpy!_

He bit down on his lip.

Perhaps he could have thought that one through a little more carefully.

And he realized - his wrists were free.

Wincing, he reached for the binders. His head was completely clear now; he could see exactly how to work the mechanism that had been eluding him. He locked and unlocked them three times before snapping them back on his wrists. 

Then he waited for the medical droid to return with its miraculous numbing drugs.


	5. Chapter 5

She didn't return.

The droid came and went, and after he'd pushed away the fog he freed himself from the binders, forced down some of the cold stew and sank into meditation, drawing on the fading pain of his injuries and his growing frustration at being caged to cast his mind over the base. He watched the flow of lifeforms come into focus; lining up and crowding into what he presumed was the canteen, descending from far above, gathering in small groups for meetings or tasks he couldn't guess at.

He watched for hours. No one came close to where he was. They'd left him alone before for this long, he knew, but then he had been half out of his mind with pain and drugfog.

He didn't want to think about his master's reaction if he didn't get out of here soon.

He had a rough map of the place now. He was near the apron where the descending spacecraft landed, a more sparsely populated area between him and two rows of what he presumed, from their lone pilots, were X-wings. The bulk of the facilities were underneath him. They were keeping him in some abandoned store room, he reasoned. It certainly hadn't been built as a cell.

Not that it would be easy to escape. He couldn't sense any birds close by, which meant either that the atmosphere was hostile - which, as far as he knew, was not the case on D'Qar - or that most of the complex was underground. And hacking keypads wasn't his area of expertise, even if he'd had the tools and the confidence that it wasn't alarmed to deter tampering.

He needed a visitor. A visitor that wasn't a heavy and cantankerous medical droid.

But neither of his two human visitors showed any sign of approaching. The General was somewhere in the depths, at the centre of a small group. Overseeing the hunt for the rest of the First Order, he guessed. He doubted they'd find them; any ships that got away from Starkiller would have pre-programmed escape routes with multiple jumps across the galaxy to make pursuit impossible. And the bulk of the fleet was peripatetic; even he didn't know where the Star Destroyers were supposed to be at the moment.

The girl was closer. She seemed to spend a lot of time in the area between the apron and where he was - a maintenance hangar, he presumed from the oil he'd seen on her hands and the movement between there and the landed spacecraft. She spent a lot of time alone. She showed no sign of approaching his cell, though. It was irritating. And not, he was surprised to realize, just because he needed more information on what was going on out there.

He was bored. And annoying and vicious as she was, she and her mysterious Force powers were certainly not boring.

She was close enough that he might be able to feel something of her state of mind. He concentrated on the knot of energy that was her presence in the Force and touched a swirl of fear and confusion and loneliness that almost overwhelmed him. So similar to what he'd felt in her on Starkiller. And so similar to those echoes from his former self…

He reached for her again before he realized he was doing so. She was moving, almost running towards the row of spacecraft.

No. She didn't get to bring him here, sneak in to stare at him like some animal in a zoo, and then just _leave_.

He was half-afraid she was going to jump into one of the X-wings and disappear, but she just came to a stop, standing alone. Which was curious. Had she heard something? Or just had a sudden need for outside air?

Or had she felt him watching? He wasn't sure whether that was even possible.

She made her way to the lower levels; he followed her to the canteen and then blinked himself back to the room. She would come back.

He stood and stretched and rubbed his wrists where the binders had chafed, revelling in the relief of finally being free of them. He was steadier on his feet now, able to push the effects of the drug further away from his mind and his limbs. He ran carefully through the basic moves of the Shii-Cho, visualizing his lightsaber in his hand and feeling the Force flow through his body with each stretch and lunge. He wobbled twice, but his injuries would not hinder his movements when they were fully healed. Before long they'd be just scars to add to the others he'd collected over the years.

He continued with the other forms, keeping the familiar sequences slow as he discovered which movements he could make without undoing the work of the bacta. When he was done he sank down on the bed, exhausted but clear-headed.

Now all he needed was a lightsaber. Which was highly unlikely, unless the girl was foolish enough to bring the one she had taken. And given her mood the last time she had faced him with it, it was probably better if she didn't.

He reached out to see where she was. She was on one of the lower levels; it took him a long time to find her in the hive below. Her light seemed dimmer than it had before. He focussed on it, touched fear, hope, longing…

An answering longing flared up in him. He caught glimpses of a brown-skinned man lying on a bed, the sharp sterile smell of a medbay, her hand on the man's brow-

And the white-hot heat of _outrage_ burned through them both before he was slammed back to his cell.

She was visiting the _traitor._ A nobody, a failed soldier who could not possibly understand the power within her.

He flung his empty bowl across the room, longing for a lightsaber so he could wreak his rage on these walls that dared to contain him. Instead, he flung himself into the aggressive exercises of the Juyo form, sinking his anger into the Force until he was exhausted.

He slept. He was woken by the droid. He pushed down the drug and ate. He scanned the base.

She was close. Concern and confusion and the smell of grease and metal.

He _pushed._ He was rewarded with a ripple of anger.

_I'm here, Rey. You put me here. You don't get to just ignore me now._

He could sense her fierce focus on her task. But she would come.

He was running through the moves of the Soresu form for the second time when the keypad beeped. He lunged for the binders. By the time she came in, he was leaning against the wall. She closed the door and glared at him.

He let himself slump, keeping his shackled hands visible. "You're not supposed to be in here, are you?"

"It's not up to them. And no-one's around to see anyway."

He closed his eyes for a moment and _looked_. She was right: this level of the base was even emptier than usual. This might be his best chance.

"You've been in my head," she said. "All the time."

He raised an eyebrow. "I'm flattered, Rey, but this is hardly the time or the place."

She stomped across the room. "Stop it! Whatever the kriff you're doing, leave me out of it! I don’t want to have to even think about you!"

"So don't," he said. "Think about what you like, but don’t blame me for your obsession."

She turned away with an inarticulate cry of frustration. He dropped the binders; in two strides his hand was on her shoulder. One glimpse at the horror on her face and he was inside her mind.

She was strong, but her defences were frozen in that moment of shock and he slid into the spaces between them. By the time she'd recovered enough to shove him away, he had control. She stood with her back to him, outwardly calm. But he could feel her turmoil underneath his grip.

He steadied himself against the wall.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Rey," he said quietly. "But I need you to come with me."

A ripple of loathing.

So be it. He didn't need her acquiescence.

He glanced around the room. He snapped the binders off their chain. Nothing else was worth taking.

He pointed her to the door. "You will open the door and walk with me to the hangar."

Silence.

And then she repeated tonelessly: "I will open the door and walk with you to the hangar."

She punched the code into the keypad. The door opened. He linked his arm through hers and they walked out of the room.

Straight into the barrel of a blaster.


	6. Chapter 6

  


Rey strained against his control. He clamped down on her resistance. Pushed down the fog that was rising to smother him.

The blaster held steady, aimed right between his eyes.

"I wondered why she was asking so many questions about you," said the man behind it. "So this is what you look like under that mask? I can kind of see why you wear it."

It was the pilot, the one he'd captured on Jakku - and by the steel in his eyes he remembered all too well what had happened afterwards.

"Out of respect for the General, I'm not going to blast you here and now," he said. "But if you don't get back in that room, I swear I'll put a hole in your head that'll make what you did to me look like a mild hangover."

"That would be ill advised."

"Yeah? Well I'm not in the mood to listen to your advice, so-"

"Try asking _her_."

The pilot held his aim as he glanced at his companion. "Rey?" He took in her blank-eyed stare. _"Rey?_ What have you _done_ to her, you-"

The blaster wobbled. One gesture and the idiot crumpled to the floor.

Rey was still standing motionless, still fruitlessly fighting his control. He was almost shaking with the effort of maintaining it, but he managed to hold her as he dragged the pilot into the room. He'd have liked to take the man's boots, but there was no way they'd fit. The blaster would be useful, though; he slung the strap over his shoulder.

He slid the door closed and heard the lock click into place.

He took a breath, and caught her arm again. "You will walk with me to the hangar."

"I will walk with you to the hangar."

The corridor they were in was dusty and ill-lit; clearly few people had reason to pass this way. It ended at a heavy blast door. He leaned against the wall and felt for signs of life in the space beyond; he would not be caught unawares again.

The way was clear - there seemed to be some kind of gathering on a lower level, and those few remaining on this level weren't close.

He tightened his grip on her arm. "You will open the door."

"I…"

He had a split-second to dig in before she lashed out like an electrowhip cutting through his head. He staggered against the wall, pulling her with him, hooking his mind into hers so that every effort she made to dislodge him hurt her a hundred times more. She tried to struggle through it but after only a few seconds, she slumped.

He tightened his hold. "It won't hurt if you don't fight me," he told her. "Now _open that door._ "

She moved as if wading through tar, but she did move. The door irised open; light flooded in from the corridor beyond.

It was empty.

He nudged her forward. After two more turns, the hangar loomed ahead. This was the biggest gamble: between the amount of time Rey usually spent in the hangar, the neutral clothes they'd given him and the very small number of people who knew his face, they were unlikely to attract attention from a distance. But if anyone else came close, or if there wasn't a ship he could steal…

But as they entered the hangar, he smiled at the sight of a familiar W-shaped starship: the Force was with him today. The _Mirrorbright_ \- the General's personal vessel which was configured for a single pilot, kept fuelled and ready to go at all times - would be perfect.

He picked up a half-empty toolbag from a parked speeder and walked purposefully towards the ship. Last time he'd seen _Mirrorbright_ she'd lived up to her name: now she was as scruffily nondescript as the _Falcon_ , over on the other side of the hangar. He hoped that, like the _Falcon_ , her performance was more impressive than her paintwork.

Rey walked beside him. She could not pull away now.

He startled at a shout from the other side of the hangar. A ground tech waved. He ignored her. After a second she shrugged and went back to her task.

The _Mirrorbright_ 's ramp was down; he looked at her through the Force. There was no-one aboard.

He pulled Rey onto the ramp.

A furious roar echoed through the hangar.

_Chewie._

He spun round just as the bowcaster bolt whistled past his shoulder and thudded into the ramp. He swung the blaster up and fired wildly back, just as Rey broke free and elbowed him right where the Wookiee had shot him before. He gasped but his power surged with the pain and adrenalin. He froze her in place as she tried to scramble away.

He crouched beside her. The tech who'd waved before had taken cover. Another was running for an alarm. And a hundred and fifty kilos of enraged Wookiee was charging towards him.

He fired. The Wookiee barely slowed.

 _No._ He was too close to be trapped again now. 

He seized the speeder they'd passed before and smashed it down in front of the Wookiee. Two shots with the blaster and its leaking fuel tank went up in flames. The Wookiee howled.

_Payback._

He snapped the binders around Rey's wrists as he pushed her into unconsciousness. He flung her over his shoulder and staggered up the ramp.

An alarm blared.

He hit the button to close the ramp and ran for the cockpit. He dumped her in the auxiliary seat, flipping switches for the start-up sequence as he secured her in place. He engaged the repulsorlift. Sank into the pilot's seat. Pulled up the landing gear and manoeuvred towards the open skies beyond.

A swarm of jumpsuited people poured from a nearby stairwell. But being in the General's ship would give them a few seconds of immunity...

He activated the shields just as the first person fired.

A few more seconds and they'd be clear. Apart from the row of X-wings waiting on the tarmac.

His fingers flew over the ship's weapons controls, priming the laser cannons. As he rose out of the hangar he strafed the line of fighters into blooms of fire and smoke. Then he threw the sublight engines to maximum and pulled back in a steep climb. 

His head was spinning; he kicked the console with his bare foot and used the pain to focus himself. He was managing to neutralize the effects of the drugs, but the effort was costing him.

He punched co-ordinates into the navicomputer; he needed to get into the black and jump out of the system as soon as he could.

But he was free! Free of the Resistance and freer than he'd felt since joining the First Order. For a moment he had a wild urge to take the ship and disappear into the stars with Rey… but that was no way to honour his family's legacy. 

He glanced at her; she was still unconscious, the acceleration pressing her back in her seat

A mechanical voice came through on the sublight comm. " _Mirrorbright,_ your departure is unauthorized. Please state your mission code."

He ignored it.

He could see the blue curve of the planet's atmosphere where it met the darkness of space; he was high enough to transmit. He opened the hyperwave comm and punched in the code for a First Order priority channel.

The speaker crackled. "Unidentified transport, you are transmitting on a reserved channel. You will-"

He cut in. "Override. Open secure channel using clearance key Trill Shen Three Six Cresh. Voiceprint Kylo Ren."

There was silence from the trooper at the other end. Probably she'd been told he was dead. Probably she was caught between fearing this was a trap and fearing it wasn't.

But it was only seconds before her voice carried clear through the speaker, still professional but far more deferential. "Confirmed and acknowledged, Sir. Stand by."

The receiver squealed.

He glanced at the scanner. He was no longer alone in the sky, and still three minutes from being able to jump.

"Channel secure, Sir. Ready to copy."

"I have located the resistance base in the equatorial region of the planet D'Qar in the Ileenium system. Prepare to receive co-ordinates in three… two… one…" He flipped a switch on the nav console. There was a short burst of binary.

"Data received. Any further instructions?"

"Jumping in three. Require rendezvous at meeting point Grek Forn in three standard days."

"Grek Forn, three standard days. Copied."

"Ren out."

He closed the channel. He'd done what he could; hopefully there was still someone alive over there competent enough to run an attack on the base. Now it was time to get out.

The scanner showed two X-wings slowly closing the distance between them. The navicomputer was still showing more than two minutes before he could jump. It was going to be close.

He increased power to the shields; the navicomputer's countdown jumped back ten seconds as the energy bled from the engines.

"Ben. _Ben!_ " The General's voice filled the cockpit. "You need to come back now!"

Not one of her most convincing efforts, all things considered.

Two minutes.

He primed the ship's missiles.

"You're sick! You aren't fit to fly!" 

He switched the comm to transceive mode. "I'll be the judge of that."

He wouldn't have bothered to answer, but there had been a note of desperation in the General's voice. Like the last thing she'd said to him down there: _I will not give up on you now._ He had given up on her a long time ago, but perhaps he could still take advantage of her weakness.

Ninety seconds.

"Ben, they'll have you within range in sixty seconds. Turn back or they'll shoot you down."

A bluff.

"So, it's die up here or die down there? Some choice."

Eighty seconds.

The scanner blared an alarm.

Ah, now that was more like it - she'd just been trying to distract him.

A third X-wing had emerged from hyperspace, and was turning to join the pursuit. He threw the _Mirrorbright_ into a hard right turn, angling away from them all.

Seventy seconds.

He overrode his targeting computer's database of friendlies - nothing was friendly up here. The computer scanned, found the X-wing above him and locked on green. He could blast the thing out of the way, but he'd still have two on his tail. He'd rather not have to deal with any of them.

He spoke into the mike. "I have missile lock on that X-wing. Get it out of my way or I'll do it for you."

Sixty seconds.

He sensed the incoming missile an instant before the scanner wailed: one of the pursuing X-wings trying its luck with an out-of-range shot. He rolled to the right.

Rey slid from her seat.

_Kriff!_

He was sure he'd strapped her in securely; he must have fumbled the catches in his haste. But there was nothing he could do about that now. He had his hands and head full of flying, tracking missiles and willing the ship away from the planet's gravity well.

Sixty seconds. The roll had cost them.

The missile hurtled past.

A warning shot. Meant to miss. Meant to make him think they had been lucky, and would not be lucky again.

Or maybe not.

He let off his own missile. It streaked towards its target.

Fifty seconds.

He had to play his last card. The _Mirrorbright_ was responsive, but it was a transport, not a fighter: if those X-wings caught up to them, they were done.

If the Mother had given up on him, it was time to appeal to the General.

"This is _Mirrorbright._ I have the girl from Jakku aboard. Are you really willing to sacrifice her to get to me?"

Forty seconds.

The X-wing he'd targeted exploded in a plume of light. The way ahead was clear.

Thirty seconds.

She spoke. "There is no reason to sacrifice either of you. Just bring her back, Ben. Don't drag her down with you!"

And there it was. "Yes, I was always last on your priority list, wasn't I? Looks like that hasn't changed after all."

He cut the connection - either she'd call off the attack or she wouldn't. He was done with her.

Twenty seconds.

The X-wings had to be within missile range now. His shields were full but he didn't know how many direct hits they could take. He braced himself to manoeuvre.

Ten seconds.

They didn't fire.

The nav panel flashed green. He engaged the hyperdrive and jumped free. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...
> 
> I hope this development won't be too disappointing to anyone who was expecting Kylo to stay imprisoned for the duration of the fic. After reading some of your earlier comments, I think perhaps I could have got to where I wanted to go within that scenario after all, but Kylo _really_ didn't want to stay put (Empires to grow, people to slay...) And there were too many irresitable scenes that suggested themselves this way: Kylo is now with Rey, and neither of them has a lightsaber. Let the war of words commence...
> 
> Again, a huge _THANK-YOU_ to you who have been commenting so far - I'm really grateful that you're happy to share your thoughts on this ficlet!
> 
> I'm away for the weekend; our regularly scheduled snark will recommence on Sunday.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been away for the weekend - discovering that, as far as Lego Star Wars goes, I definitely do _not_ share Rey's flying abilities. :-/ So I've not had time to answer your comments - I'll try to get back to them tomorrow. As always, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the chapter, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you make of this one!

  


He slumped forward, exhausted. Hyperspace swirled in front of him, a mesmerizing blue.

_Rey._

Rey! He could see her legs twitching under the console. She was alive, thank the Force. He scrambled out of his seat.

The ship lurched. Alarms blared. An acrid smell filled the cockpit.

_What the kark-_

He wedged himself back into his seat. The control panel was lit up like a festival night on Coruscant: the hyperdrive flashing red, shields pulsing full green, at least fifteen auxiliary systems flashing yellow alerts.

The navicomputer was completely dead.

The ship began to tumble; he grabbed the controls but hyperspace wasn't atmo and nothing he did could correct it. The artificial gravity couldn't keep up. He braced himself against the console. Somewhere below, Rey shouted in pain.

They were falling out of hyperspace; the ship was running its emergency protocol and so all they could do was hang on. He clung to the console, _reached_ to press Rey to the floor and concentrated on shielding them from the hail of tools, datapads and a myriad small screws that were tumbling around the cockpit.

Five long and very uncomfortable minutes later, they came to rest.

He looked up. Outside the window was black space. One piece of luck, then: they hadn't come out in a star, or asteroid belt, or in the core of a planet.

Another piece of luck: the ship was intact and the auxiliary systems back to green. They were safe for now.

He crouched down beside the console. "Rey?"

She was conscious, but shaken; for once she wasn't glaring at him. He helped her out. Her fingers were curled tightly around a handful of wires.

He looked at the wires. He looked at the dead computer. He looked at Rey.

He could feel the anger rising and he tried to push it back because it wouldn't help, it wouldn't help them survive this but then she looked at him in wide-eyed terror and the tide of fury took him. He pulled her to her feet and pushed her back against the console with his hand around her throat.

"What have you _done?_ "

She tried to push him away but he had weight and rage on his side and there was no way he was letting her up to wreak more havoc.

He leaned over, squeezing hard. She let out a strangled whimper. He brought his face close to hers and glared into her hard hazel eyes. "Do you hate me so much you were willing to kill us both? Or are you just REALLY KRIFFING _STUPID?"_

He stepped back, letting her slump to the floor. He crouched in front of her and pointed towards the main cabin. "If you ever pull anything like that again, I'm going to lock you in one of those cupboards back there. For my sanity and for your own safety. Do you understand?"

She lunged at him; he flung himself to the side just in time to avoid a blow from the heavy binders. He grabbed her waist. She twisted; he cursed as she brought the binders down on his leg. He pulled her back against him and wrapped his arm around her, trapping hers. She squirmed. He held her tight.

 _"Enough!"_

He gripped the edge of the console and pulled them to their feet. "I'm not your enemy here." He pointed out of the window. " _That_ is. Do you have any idea where we are?"

She shook her head.

"No? Well neither do I. And do you have any idea how to find out where we are?"

She looked out of the window, and swallowed.

"No? And neither do I." He swung her round to face him. "Final question. Do you want to die here?"

"N-no." The word came out in a hoarse croak.

"Good. Neither do I. And like it or not, you've got a better chance of getting out of here alive if we work together. So could you _please_ stop trying to kill me, at least until we're off this ship?"

"…wasn't," she rasped.

"What?"

"Wasn't trying to kill you. Just wanted to stop you."

"Right. And have you _any_ idea how insanely dangerous that was?"

She shrugged. "Thought I could cut it before you jumped."

"Mother of Kwath." He shook his head in disbelief. "Can you fix it?"

"Maybe." She coughed. "What then?"

"Then we punch in some co-ordinates and go on our merry way." 

"Not going anywhere you want to go."

He walked towards the back of the ship. "Can't we discuss that later? We've a few other things to worry about before we get to that stage. Assuming it's even fixable."

She followed him into the main cabin. "Can you take these off?" He turned; she was holding out the binders. "Not like I can go anywhere."

He looked at her, at the binders, at the alcove couch, at the small eating area. He pointed to the floor beside the table. "Sit there." 

She glowered at him.

He waited. She had said it herself: it wasn't as if she had anywhere else to go.

She sank gracelessly to the floor. He knelt beside her and took hold of the binders. She flinched away. 

He released one of her hands, pushed her back, pulled her arms behind her and locked her wrists together around the table leg.

"What the-" She pulled against the binders. "How the kriff is that going to help?"

"It'll help by stopping you breaking something else." He stood up and rummaged in one of the portside cupboards. "You may be used to just pulling things out of the walls on those wrecks you worked on, but living ships require a bit more care."

"I hate you."

He glanced back at her. "Fine. Hate me all you like. Just ease up on the murder attempts."

He found what he was looking for in the next cupboard. He poured some of the liquid into a glass and put it to her lips. "Drink this. It'll help."

"What is it? It smells horrible."

"Bactade. And it tastes worse than it smells." He tilted the glass.

She took a couple of gulps, and spluttered. "Kriff, that's disgusting."

"Don't say I didn't warn you." He put the glass on the table.

"I still hate you"

"Grow up." He stalked back to the cockpit.

The blaster was wedged under the pilot's seat; it appeared to have survived its battering. He stowed it in the small crew locker under the console, secured with a code he set himself; the last thing he needed was for her to get her hands on it.

The space under the console smelled of ozone and smoke. Wires trailed from a half-open access panel, and the scorch marks inside told him this wouldn't be a simple job of reconnecting them.

He had a bad feeling about this.

He knew the basics of interstellar navigation, of course: with his upbringing he could hardly not. But navigating the hyperspace lanes required a working computer; if they couldn't fix it - and be confident that the fix would work - they'd have to rely on the sublight engines. And that could take… a lot longer than he'd prefer to spend trapped with a woman who was constantly _abusing_ him. Worse, without knowing where they were, he didn't know what direction to point them in.

And they needed to find a direction to move in. They weren't likely to be rescued: the ship's beacon would be broadcasting the last position it had from the navicomputer, and that could be ten systems away.

He set up a scan of their surroundings and left it to run.

He could feel her watching him as he walked through to the fresher. He didn't look at her.

The bacta patch was half hanging off his face. He bit his lip and pulled it free.

He stared at the mirror. He'd known it was bad, but…

He'd never thought of himself as vain - he relied, after all, on the _absence_ of his face to intimidate. But he had taken satisfaction from knowing the mask hid not the twisted monster of a thousand whispered rumours, but the face of a man who in the privacy of his own mirror saw himself clearly. Now, though… Now, she had _marked_ him.

He clenched his fists.

 _Very well._ He would mark her far more deeply before they were done.

He returned to the cabin and crouched in front of her. She wanted to look away, he could feel it, but she did not. He would give her credit for that, at least.

She was afraid to speak, but she feared the silence more. "Ben…"

He frowned. "You got that from the General, didn't you?"

"Got what?"

As if she didn’t know. "The _Ben_ thing. Don't do it. My name is Kylo Ren."

"I'm not using that."

"Why not?"

She looked away. "It's… a bit of a mouthful."

 _It's the name of a monster_ , is what she meant.

"What," he sneered, "anything longer than one syllable is too much for you?"

She ignored the jibe. "And I suppose everyone you know uses… that? Even your friends?"

"I don't have friends."

She looked at him, almost on the verge of saying something - but she just nodded. As well she might, given what he'd seen of her life on Jakku. She knew about having to rely on herself.

"So call me Ren." He was used to that, at least. Hux couldn't seem to manage three syllables either.

He turned his back on her and went to investigate the aft cabins. Unfortunately, no one had left behind a pair of boots in his size, but he did find some insulated socks and a couple of padded jackets. One locker had a false bottom concealing a substantial stash of unmarked credits, which might have kept them comfortably if they'd been planetside but out here were about as useful as a boat in the desert. Still, the ship's supply of emergency rations was fully stocked, and they were unlikely to ever run out of Gatalentantea.

He brewed two cups of it, heated one of the ration packs, and carried the food to the table. He settled into one of the chairs and looked down at Rey, who had been watching in a simmering silence.

"If I let you go, do you think you can refrain from attacking me?"

She glowered. "If you can stop pushing me around."

"We have a deal." He waved his hand in an extravagant gesture; the binders fell to the floor. "Dinner is served."

Rey rubbed her wrists and took the chair that was furthest from him. He pushed half of the food towards her. They watched each other warily as they ate.

"So here's how it is," he said, warming his hands on his cup as he sipped his tea. "As far as I can see, the navicomputer's dead. We'll have to open it up to be sure, but if we can't fix it, we're stuck sublight. We seem to have come out between systems but the initial scan suggests there could be two or three we could get to. I'm running a deeper scan to try to identify habitable planets. If we're very lucky we'll find a match between the scan and one of the datapad maps and we'll know where we are. If we're not we'll just have to choose one and hope for the best. But either way we could be here for a while."

"The ship is stocked for a crew of four to survive for six months. So that gives us a year, maybe a bit more if we ration carefully. What concerns me more is fuel: we should have enough to make it to one of the systems nearby, but we can't afford to waste any. So I propose we just use this cabin and run the rest on minimum life support."

"Do I get a say in this?"

He didn't bother to hide his irritation. "Getting us into this situation isn't enough of a say for you?"

She gaped at him. "You're blaming _me_? You _made_ me come with you! You-" Her voice shook. "I don't want to know what you did to me back there but it was _horrible_. Why can't you just leave me alone!" 

Because he'd needed her to get him past the doors. Because his master had ordered him to bring her. Because the loneliness he'd felt in her was all too familiar. Because her fury was _magnificent_ and it would be a travesty to see that seething power wasted. Because. 

_Because._

But who was she to judge him? The only person he answered to was his master. And it was an irrelevant question, anyway: a distraction, like her pointless query about her 'friends' when he'd questioned her. 

"I wouldn't have got away from there otherwise," he said. "And I don't remember _you_ being so squeamish when you forced that stormtrooper to help you run away before. I do what I need to do, and so do you. And as I said before, right now we need to work together." 

She crossed her arms. "'Working together' doesn't mean you bossing me about." 

"I've spent half my life in spaceships. _Working_ spaceships. I promise you that if I ever have the misfortune to be stuck in a desert with you, I'll be happy to follow your lead."

She scowled. "And from your wealth of experience of being stuck in a ship with your worst enemy, you want us to keep to this room for a _year_?"

"How many times do I need to tell you that I'm not your enemy?"

She looked down at her hands. He waited for her to look up, to respond, to make any acknowledgement at all of the truth of it, but she stayed silent.

Eventually, he had to continue. "I know it's not ideal, but it might not be for so long. If we can match the scan to a map, or if we come across an old beacon or another ship… but I don't want to be here in a year's time wishing we'd been more careful now."

"Right." She was still looking at her hands; she twisted her fingers together. "And where are we supposed to sleep?"

"You can use the couch in here. I'll take the cockpit."

She shrugged. "Fine, I've slept in worse. And _I'm_ used to rationing my food."

He bristled at the implication. "And I'm used to the cold. So let's see how we get on, shall we?"

They emptied the rear cabins of anything warm or edible and sealed the doors. He left her piling blankets on the couch as he locked himself in the cockpit and dialled down the life support systems. Then he wrapped a blanket around himself and reclined the auxiliary chair. His body ached for a more comfortable bed, but there was no way he'd get any sleep at all without a locked door between her and the ship controls.

There was one more thing he had to do before he slept, and he wasn't looking forward to it.

He leaned over the hyperwave transceiver. He half hoped it wouldn't work; but after several minutes of authentication protocols, he had a static-ridden audio channel to his master.

"Kylo Ren." The velvet menace in the voice was palpable, even through the white noise. "You have been… absent."

"I was-"

"You were _defeated_ by the scavenger girl."

"No. I was testing her. But I misjudged my injuries and her strength."

"And so she defeated you."

He made no response. His master would not tolerate a second contradiction.

"You have escaped the Resistance base. I was not expecting you to break silence so soon."

"There's been a… complication."

Silence from the other end. He had to get on with it.

"The ship I took malfunctioned. We lost the navicomputer and fell out of hyperspace at an unknown location. If it's possible to trace this signal back-"

"We? You are not alone?"

_Kriff._

"I have the girl with me."

The receiver hissed. He hoped it was just channel interference.

His master spoke. "Your feelings for this girl are a weakness."

"No! It was you who told me to bring-"

"Do not come to me until you have dealt with it."

He swallowed. "You want me to kill her."

"I leave that decision to you. But first, I want you to learn from her."

The connection died. Either the channel had collapsed or Snoke had cut him off.

So his master was making this into a test? He found he was not surprised: Snoke's training allowed for no weaknesses. One part of it was clear. There would be no rescue: he had to get out of this situation himself. But the other part nagged at him.

What in the galaxy did his master expect _him_ to learn from _her_?

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Never underestimate the Rey! ;)


	8. Chapter 8

He woke to the sight of his own breath in the cockpit. He adjusted the heating; extending their range was pointless if they froze before they could get anywhere.

The blank navicomputer screen taunted him; he let his anger rise to the surface and warm him. He stretched - that chair was damned uncomfortable and if he hadn't been so exhausted he doubted he'd have slept at all - and unlocked the door.

Rey was shivering in a huddle of blankets, blowing out little puffs of breath.

He watched her as he heated water for tea. "Are you all right?"

She looked at him warily. "What do you care?" 

"If I didn't care, I wouldn't ask." He handed her a cup of tea and a protein biscuit. She warmed her hands on the mug and watched wisps of steam twist towards the air vents.

He suppressed a smile. What the kriff was he supposed to learn from this creature? 

"You're not used to the cold," he said. 

She scowled, but the red in her cheeks betrayed her embarrassment. "I didn’t know you could see your breath," she said. "I thought there was something wrong with the air on that battle planet thing." 

"I've turned the heat up," he told her. "It'll be a bit warmer in a couple of hours. But in the meantime I need you to have a look at that computer."

"You mean _we_ need me to look at that computer."

Somehow he doubted Snoke had meant it was her attitude he should emulate.

"Sure." He pulled away her blankets. " _We_ need you to look at the computer."

"Hey!" She rubbed her arms.

He grabbed the bag of tools. "Preferably today?"

He watched her crawl under the console and deftly remove the access hatch.

"Is there a light?" she asked.

He'd seen a portable lamp in one of the cupboards; he _reached_ with his mind and it landed beside her. She eyed it warily for a moment before switching it on.

"Can you pass me the hydrospanner? It's the one-"

"Here." He put it in her outstretched hand. She looked at him oddly.

He sat back. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I just wasn't expecting _you_ to know a hydrospanner from a Harris wrench.

"Why wouldn't I?" He was oddly irritated by her assumption. "I grew up crawling around starships. I may not be much of a slicer but I've not forgotten how to undo a bolt." 

She looked at him even more strangely then, and he didn't need to _look_ to know she was wondering about that upbringing, about who had taught him to use tools. But those were echoes from a past that was dead and _gone._

She was still staring. 

_"Now_ what's the matter?" he snapped. 

"It's just weird seeing you as a-" she waved her hand as if to summon a suitable word "-a person."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm a person. Any more brilliant observations?"

Her gaze flicked down to his hands, his chest, back to his face. He quirked an eyebrow at her scrutiny, daring her to speak.

But she just shrugged, and turned back to the panel. "You've a really mean temper?"

"You have your moments too, you know." He wasn't offended. It was actually something of a relief to see there was something besides her sullen murderous side, to watch the precise movements of her hands as she tried to coax something useful from the mess of wires.

Ten minutes later, she wriggled back. She ran her hand over her face, leaving a black smudge on her cheek.

"Not good?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It looks like there was a power surge at the interface with the hyperdrive controls. The connection there is completely burnt out."

"Can we bypass it?"

"Maybe. If there's no damage further in. But it blew back into the computer too. Unless there's a spare board somewhere, or we can cannibalize something else…"

"Do you really think it's safe for you to be messing around with systems you haven't already broken?"

She glared. "I know what I'm doing! But I doubt another system's component would even work. Navicomputers have a really tight tolerance. "

He nodded. "There's a box of spare components in the end cupboard. I'm not sure there's anything useful, but you might see something I didn't."

He boiled water as she searched through the box. When she was done, she slumped on the couch; he didn't need to ask her whether she'd been successful. He had never been more glad of the General's fondness for Gatalentan tea: if ever he'd needed its calming effect, it was now.

They looked at each other. They were stuck here.

This was real.

He ran a hand through his hair. "So. We need to choose a system to head for. And if you agree, I think we should adjust our beacon."

"You're asking me?"

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Just that broadcasting our identity as the personal starship of the ex-Senator Princess General Hero Resistance Leader Organa might not be the most life-prolonging course of action. And also that a low-information signal will travel further. I've no idea what our chances are of coming across anyone else out in this sector of the galaxy, but we might as well maximize our chances of survival if we do."

"Sounds fair enough." They walked forward to the cockpit. It took little time to make the changes to the beacon, and to set a course towards the most core-wards system. The hum of the sublight engines was reassuring; they were a ship again, not floating but flying.

For what could turn out to be a very, very long journey.

_I want you to learn from her._

But learn what? Was it something to do with that desert wasteland she'd emerged from, the ships of the old Empire she'd spent her life exploring? Or was it to do with the latent Force-sensitivity that must have kept her relatively unharmed all that time?

He folded himself into the pilot's seat. As he'd expected, she took the other, unwilling to cede him control of the cockpit. They looked out at the distant stars.

"What was it like, growing up on Jakku?" he asked.

She gave him a sharp look. "None of your business."

He sighed. "We're going to be stuck together for a while," he said. "It's going to get very dull very quickly if we can't talk to each other."

She leaned over an instrument, but she was only pretending to look at it: the altimeter wasn't much use in space.

"Fine," she said at last. "But you can go first." She looked over at him, apprehensive but determined. "Tell me why you did it."

"Did what?"

"You know what."

He didn't, actually: there was a long list of things she could throw at him. But he didn't want to risk pressing her and shutting her down: sometimes questions could be as revealing as answers.

He closed his eyes and felt for her presence in the Force. He touched grief, confusion, the death of hope.

Oh. _That_.

He fixed his gaze on the window. He wasn't sure he had an answer for her, but he found he did want to talk.

"The first thing you have to understand," he said, "is that Han Solo wasn't really my father."

"What?" She frowned. "That's not what-"

"Oh, biologically he was. But apart from that… He wasn't around a lot. And when he was around, all he did was argue. And then he ran off to his races and looked for young wingheads to adopt because I didn't live up to what he wanted. Commitment wasn't exactly his strong point."

"No. He wasn't like that."

He rounded on her. "Oh, you know better, do you? You spent, what, a day with him? And did he seem like he cared? Did he offer to help you, or did he do his best to wriggle out of it?"

She looked away; he knew he'd hit home. "He offered me a job."

For a moment the jealousy threatened to overwhelm him. "So you were to be his latest protégée, then. Were you flattered that a living legend took an interest in you? I meant what I said before - he would have disappointed you."

"That's hardly a reason to murder him! I would have given anything to know my father!"

"So would I, once. He never gave me that option."

He stared into the black. He hadn't answered her question, he knew. How he could have done what he'd done was not the same as why he had done it. And he wasn't sure he could explain that at all.

"I still don't get it," she said.

He looked at her. "That's because you didn't know your parents," he said. "You have this romantic idea of what family life is like that's only possible because you haven't experienced it."

She stared at him as if he'd plunged a knife into her chest. "How can you-"

He leaned towards her and he didn't care if he was pushing her because she certainly wasn't sparing him. "Is that a bit close to home for you? So it's fine for you to go trampling on _my_ past but I'm not allowed to intrude on yours? Or am I not enough of a _person_ for my feelings to matter?"

She stood up. "You were the one who wanted to talk."

He grabbed her arm. "Sit down."

She tried to shake him off. He tightened his grip. She didn't get to stir all this up and then _walk away._

"I said _Sit Down._ You asked me a question and I haven't answered it."

Her eyes met his, and she must have seen how the storm was brewing because she backed into her chair and sat with her knees up against her chest.

"It wasn't about him," he said at last. "He got in the way. He was trying to make me deny who I am."

She was silent for a minute. And then, "Maybe it's you who are denying who you are."

He gave her a contemptuous stare. "Oh, you think so? Who am I, then?"

She swallowed. "I saw you. He said to come home. And you wanted to."

He gripped the arm of his chair. "That part of me is _dead!_ And there was no 'home'. You saw that."

"Your mother said Snoke corrupted you."

He laughed, scornful. "The dark side is in my blood. My mother couldn't face that - you heard what she said. They even tried to make me into a _Jedi_ because they were so determined to keep me away from my heritage."

"What do you even mean by that?"

"By what?"

"Your heritage, the dark side. Are you saying you have no choice? That you have to be evil because one of your ancestors was?"

"Evil?" He stared at her, momentarily stunned. "Is that really how you see me? I know you don't like the First Order, but… evil?" He shook his head. "Is that why you tried to kill me before we'd even met?"

"You serve the dark side. You said it yourself."

"I don't 'serve' the dark side, I use it. And that isn't 'evil' either. It's just a different way of getting things done."

"'Things' like murder."

"Oh, for… You really think the Jedi didn't kill people? Not even you can be that naïve."

"That's different."

He put his head in his hands. Why did lightsiders have to be so _rigid_? Worse, so rigid in such a distorted view of how things were? She obviously believed in what she was saying, believed it utterly. If he tried to explain she'd probably just think it was his inner evilness trying to trick her.

But if he could show her…

He looked up. "You're right: it is different. But do you know why?"

"Isn't it obvious? The Jedi fought for the good of the galaxy!"

"And who defines the good of the galaxy? You? Why not me?"

"Because-"

"Yes, I know, because I'm a monster. Don't you see what a circular argument it is?"

"I wasn't going to say that. The Jedi were protecting people."

"The Empire protected people too. Look, forget the politics. That's about _what_ people are fighting for. The difference between the dark side and the light side is in _how_ they fight."

Her forehead was scrunched in confusion - unsurprising, given that she didn't even know what light side and dark side meant. 

His eyes met hers. "It would be easier to show you."

She shivered: so afraid of what she didn't understand. "How?"

"Let me show you the difference. You'll understand it when you've felt it."

She looked dubious.

The toolbox was still open on the floor between them. He held out his hand and a spanner jumped into it. "So did I use the light side or the dark side to do that?"

"Light side?"

"Are you sure?"

She shrugged. "No. How can you tell?"

"From the outside, often you can't. Once you're used to feeling the flow of the Force, it's easier to pick it up. And that's my point. Whether I use the light side or the dark side, I end up with the same spanner. Does it suddenly become evil if I used the dark side?"

She looked at him suspiciously, obviously afraid he was trying to catch her out. But he really wasn't.

"Your turn," he said. "I'll show you how it works with the light side. It's basic: one of the first lessons your precious Jedi used to learn. So there's nothing for you to worry about. All right?"

She looked at him. She looked at the spanner. Finally, she nodded. "All right."

He let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

"So." He was momentarily flustered. He felt the weight of the spanner in his hand. He waved it at her. "So the spanner is here," he said, "and you need it to be there." He pointed at her hand. "So you need to…"

He trailed off, unsure how best to explain. It _was_ a basic exercise, but most people came to it after months of meditating on the Force.

"Close your eyes."

She hesitated a moment, then did as he asked. Her eyelashes quivered.

"Now, know that the Force is born in you and in every living thing. It's flowing around you… in you… Can you sense it?"

"I'm not sure." She opened her eyes.

Perhaps he was asking too much; perhaps her earlier aptitude had been a fluke, born of desperation and the rush of newly awakened powers. But also, what she'd learned from him so far she'd learned from imitation, not instruction.

"It might be easier if I demonstrate." He stood, leaving the spanner on his chair, and knelt beside her. "Put your hand there." He pointed to his temple.

She shrank back slightly.

" _Please_ , Rey." He held out his hand. "Trust me."

She frowned, her 'Trust _you?'_ as clear as if she'd spoken aloud. But, slowly, she reached out and touched his fingers. She was so close to him now; her eyes, wide with apprehension, fixed on his. But she was doing this, and she wouldn't, surely, if she really believed he was evil?

He smiled at her. He felt her hand tremble.

_Trust me._

He lifted her hand to his head, holding it in place with his own.

Her fingers were cool.

They burned.

What was the next step? He didn't remember it being like this when he'd learned it from Luke.

The spanner.

He closed his eyes. He let his awareness sink into the Force, brightest around the two of them but swirling out into the cabin. He felt the ebb, and the flow, and the _rightness_ of how everything was in its place.

"Do you feel that?"

"I- Yes."

He thought about the spanner, about how really its proper place was in his hand. And it was.

He let go of her hand and stood up. "Now you try." He put the spanner back on his chair.

She reached towards it, frowning.

"Relax," he told her. "You aren't trying to force it. You're suggesting to the Force that the galaxy would run more smoothly if the spanner was in your hand."

She shook her head. "I don't get it. Why would the Force care about a spanner?"

"I remember asking the same thing. And it's not an easy question to answer. You have to experience it for yourself."

He could feel her irritation. He couldn't blame her; that was probably as cryptic as anything Luke used to say.

She stared at the spanner. It didn't budge.

"You'll never move it if you're arguing with yourself," he told her. "Try pretending you believe it."

For a moment the spanner twitched - but then it lay still. He gave her a minute, then picked it up and sat down.

"Don't worry about it," he said, _reaching_ for a couple of biscuits from the cabin. "Moving it that much isn't bad for a first attempt. You need to strengthen your connection with the Force, that's all."

She looked out of the window.

He bit into one of the biscuits, chewing slowly, savouring the flavour.

"These actually aren't as bad as I thought they'd be," he said.

She shot him a sour look. "Are you going to give me one of those?"

"Oh, are you hungry?"

Her irritation was palpable. "So you didn't think that if you were hungry I might be hungry as well? Or were you just thinking of yourself as usual?"

"As usual? That's a bit unfair, don't you think?" He held up the biscuit. "If you want it, take it."

She glowered at him. She looked at the biscuit. And it was ripped out of his hand and into hers.

She almost dropped it; he couldn't help smirking at her surprise. "And that, Rey, is the dark side."

He stretched, and wandered back to the cabin. There was more he wanted to say to her, much more. But first he'd give her time to ponder what he had shown her. Time was hardly in short supply.

The ship was programmed to follow the standard day, a routine familiar to him from years of living in space. He spent the second half of it poring over the datapad star charts. Eventually, she emerged from the cockpit and joined him, saying little. He hadn't expected to find anything matching the ship's scan of the nearby systems, and they did not: navicomputers had huge databanks for a reason. But there were many more charts and many more days to look at them. It wasn't impossible that they'd get lucky.

He wasn't sure whether she meant to sleep so early; either the standard day was longer than she was used to, or her efforts with the Force had tired her more than he'd realised. One minute she was curling up in a blanket on the couch; the next she was quietly snoring.

He smiled to himself as he checked another map. If she was comfortable enough to sleep in his presence, being trapped here with her would be considerably less troublesome.

It was only when he started to yawn himself that he realised she'd presented him with a dilemma. His night in the auxiliary cockpit seat had only heightened the ache of his injuries, and had done nothing to refresh him after the exertions of the day before. And while his lifestyle could hardly be called extravagant, he was used to having a reasonably comfortable place to sleep.

He eyed the couch. He'd been meaning to ask her to swap tonight, but now that she was asleep…

He could wake her up, but he couldn't imagine she'd react well to that. Or he could return to the cockpit, which made him wince just thinking about it. Or he could join her on the couch.

All things considered, he wasn't sure she'd react well to that, either. But he needed to sleep, so it was either that or turfing her off.

Her blanket had slipped; he tucked it around her shoulders. His fingers brushed her skin, and that decided him. She was too cold, and would only get colder as she slept. She'd spent her life doing what she had to do to survive. She'd see the sense in sharing what warmth they had.

He carefully lay down beside her and pulled another blanket over them both.

She stirred, whimpering in her sleep. He held his breath and willed his mind to calm. Willed hers to follow.

She stilled.

She _was_ cold; he could feel her feet even through the blanket. He drew on the Force to make himself warm, and curled around her.

It was strange, lying so close to someone who'd attacked him over and over. He hadn't seen her so peaceful since the day he'd carried her away from Takodana, and he felt again that odd protectiveness towards her.

This, then, was the sentiment his master had warned him against. A weakness, Snoke had called it.

But it wasn't weak. He'd never felt so strong.


	9. Chapter 9

He yawned. He hadn't slept so well for weeks. Years, even.

It took him a moment to remember where he was, why there was so little space in his bed. Why he had his arm around a woman who thought him her enemy.

She'd moved back against him during the night, her head resting against his shoulder. She… fit.

He hardly dared breathe.

It wasn't as if he'd never held a woman before. But this was different from teenage fumblings or lust-filled nights or the jaded prostitutes with whom his master had instructed him to 'explore his passions'.

It didn't make sense. She was vicious and uncouth and he didn't even _like_ her.

Though seeing her like this, with sleep-mussed hair and without her habitual scowl…

He pulled her closer, listening to her breathe. He found himself sinking into meditation: the Force, flowing in him and through him, and in her and through her and around them both…

She stirred. She went rigid. He opened his eyes to find her staring back at him.

And she panicked, driving an elbow into his ribs and kicking out as she tried to claw her way out of the blankets.

He tightened his arms around her. "It's okay, Rey," he murmured. "You're safe."

"It is _not_ okay! Let go of me!"

He tried to back away without getting in the way of her flailing limbs, but only succeeded in falling off the couch. A furious pile of blankets fell on top of him. She wriggled free and ran for the fresher.

He ran his hand through his hair. Thankfully her elbow had missed the bowcaster wound, but she'd given him a few more bruises to add to his collection.

He got to his feet and brewed some tea.

The fresher door opened, and closed. He turned. She was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed tightly across her chest.

"What the _pfassk_ did you think you were doing?!"

He sipped his tea. "Sleeping, mostly. And keeping us warm. You were freezing."

"I thought you said you were sleeping in the cockpit!"

"One night of that was enough, trust me. I was going to suggest we alternate, but then you were asleep and-"

"And you thought it was fine just to crawl in beside me? I _don't_ share my sleeping space."

"You seemed relaxed enough when you were drooling on my shoulder this morning. I slept quite well. I'm sorry if you didn't."

She glared. "Trust me, I'm never going to sleep well again if I think I might wake up with _you_ lying on top of me."

That stung. "Fine. Message received."

He picked up a datapad and stalked into the cockpit. She didn't really mean it, she couldn't have: she'd never have curled up against him during the night if she was that uncomfortable. He'd startled her, that was all: she'd overreacted and now she needed some time to calm down. And given her current mood he was more than happy to provide it.

He emerged an hour later, drawn by the sound of objects thudding to the floor. He ducked back into the cockpit just in time to avoid a glass as it arced past the door and into her hand. He could feel her focus, her beautiful determination, her _wanting._

He understood wanting. He'd wanted so much, before he'd learned to reach out and take. And watching her, with her frown of concentration and the way she arched her back to catch the plate whose trajectory she'd not quite controlled… he wanted _her_.

_Kriff._ That wasn't going to help. That wasn't why he was drawn to her. He was supposed to _teach_ her, not-

And that didn't help either.

He swallowed. "Interesting." He leaned casually against the door frame. "I'd have thought you'd be trying to master the light side."

She shrugged, embarrassed. "It's not as if there's anything wrong with doing it this way."

He smiled. "Spoken like a true devotee of the dark side."

"Well, there isn't!"

He took a seat at the table. "Are you sure about that? You've spent your whole life doing what you need to do to survive. If you'd been able to pull your portions straight from your fat overseer's supplies, wouldn't you have done it?"

Her expression hardened. "Damn right I would."

"And what if you could use it to steal from another scavenger, without them having any idea who'd done it?"

"Maybe."

"And what if that other person was hungrier than you? What if they had a child to feed?"

She looked at the floor.

"You know you would." He leaned forward. "Because you've already done it."

Her head shot up; there was fire in her eyes. "Shut up!"

"Oh, I'm not judging you. But you do need to be honest about it."

"Why? I don't answer to you."

"No. You answer to yourself. Or you can choose not to, and never question where your path might be taking you."

She backed up and sat on the couch.

"I thought you were trying to convince me the dark side is safe."

He leaned back in his chair, swinging his feet up to rest on another. "I never said 'safe'. I said 'not evil'."

It was refreshing, talking about the Force to someone so new to it. The only force sensitives he'd met were his masters, and both had imposed their own views. Rey was perhaps the only person in the galaxy who might understand his.

"The dark side can drain you," he explained. "It's powerful because you use your feelings to amplify the Force, but no-one can keep that up forever. The light side is more subtle, but it lets you get out of the way and leave everything to the Force."

She thought for a moment. "But only if you can persuade the Force that the galaxy would be better if it did what you want it to do?"

"With the light side, you're not trying to persuade it. It's more that you learn to sense where the Force wants to flow. The Jedi ideal was to be so attuned to the Force that it became instinctive. They thought it made them strong, but really it made them slaves to it."

She said nothing to that. She must have been fed the same heroic lies as he had.

And he was in danger of letting her believe another. He had to tell her the whole truth, or else she'd accuse him of misleading her later. She would be so much stronger if she came to the dark knowing what it meant.

"The dark side can enslave you too, though," he said. "Using your feelings to access the force makes what you _want_ seem more important than anything else."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, that explains a lot."

He frowned. "You think I'm selfish? I don't exactly live a life of luxury."

"You are the most monumentally selfish person I've ever met! Everything always has to be about you."

"Just because _you_ don't agree with me… You have no idea what I've sacrificed! And I've been happy to do so. Fulfilling my grandfather's legacy is my duty."

"Now you're sounding like your mother."

His _mother?_

"Well," he said at last, "she certainly set a shining example there. Her 'duty' meant more to her than anyone else, even her family."

"Or maybe she felt she was helping to rebuild the galaxy _for_ her family."

He laughed. "Rebuild the galaxy? Is that what she told you? The New Republic was useless; the only thing they could do was argue. Did she tell you that too? Because she said it to me often enough."

"And that justified blowing them up? An entire system?"

"That wasn't my decision."

"You could have stopped it."

He stared up at the ceiling. She was wrong: there was no way he could have reversed an order from both Hux and Snoke. But could he have argued against it? Should he have?

_Would_ he have?

He sighed. "They were a threat to us. We removed the threat. And no, that doesn't mean I'm proud of what happened, but how much did the Senate care about how many lives were lost while they sat there squabbling and letting crime lords fill the vacuum? A government is supposed to protect people."

"Not if the people would rather be left alone."

He met her gaze. "And were you happy to be left alone? How was your life under the beneficent New Republic?"

"I could take care of myself."

"And anyone who couldn't take care of themselves deserved to starve, is that it? And you think you're on the 'good' side?"

She didn't respond.

It would have been better just to talk about the Force; he wasn't sure how they'd slipped into politics. He should have heeded his own warning against confusing the two.

He tried a peace offering. "If you want to try again with the light side, I could show you how to connect to the Force. The way Luke taught me."

"Luke?" He could feel her curiosity, warring with wariness. "And how do I know you'd be showing me that, and not some shortcut to the dark side?"

"You don't. But I've never lied to you. I spent enough of my life living a lie."

He knew she could see the truth in that. And she was too curious - and too frustrated with her earlier failure - to refuse.

He sat beside her on the floor. It didn't quite feel right, doing this on a piece of carpeted metal instead of on a lushly forested plateau or by a gurgling stream.

"Don't worry if you don't get it at first," he said. "It's not as easy to sense the Force where there aren't a lot of lifeforms."

She nodded.

Should he tell her to touch him again? He wasn't sure whether her odd ability to imitate him would even work when she wasn't angry.

And there was something uncomfortable about that idea after her earlier outburst.

"Just do what I told you yesterday," he told her. "Close your eyes. Breathe. Feel the Force moving through you. Watch it. Don't try too hard."

He sank into the meditation himself, instantly aware of the pulsing beacon that was her presence beside him. He slowed his breathing. She followed.

It was difficult to focus on the flow of the Force when she was so bright, so close. She burned with a million tangled threads that he longed to unravel, and-

And that _really_ wasn't helping.

He focused on how the Force flowed through his lungs, his veins, though every cell in his body. How it extended through the ship. How it merged with what was flowing from her. How a curious questing tendril was trying to open up a path from her to him.

And then it touched, and there was no him and no her and no light and no dark, only the Force lighting up all the loneliness and longing and half forgotten dreams of both of them. He couldn't contain it.

She was staring at him, her mouth a round 'O' of wonder.

They were the same. She felt it too.

He had never seen anything so beautiful.

It was agony to be so close and so far apart. He pulled her into his arms.

Their lips met.

He…

He was lost. He would never be lost again.

The floor bucked. His head slammed into something hard.

He blinked up at the table leg. And scrambled to his feet. Something was badly wrong for the ship to lurch like that.

"Rey? Are you-"

She was standing in the middle of the cabin, shaking. She held a long screwdriver. Pointed at him.

"Rey?"

"If you _ever_ touch me like that again, I'm going to drive this straight through your skull!"

He blinked. "But… But you…"

"I mean it! Stay away from me!"

He was standing on the threshold of two worlds, and the one where he reached out and held her close and showed her that she had nothing to fear from the glory of it all had turned into a nightmare that made no sense. He could feel her shock, her… revulsion? How could that possibly be real, after…

"But you felt it. I know you did."

"No." Her voice shook. "No."

It hurt, to see her so distressed. In that other world he would have gone to her and promised her that nothing would ever hurt her again. In this one a blast door had slammed down between them.

"But you wanted-"

"How could you think- How many people have you killed? You tortured Poe. You nearly killed Finn. You murdered your own _father._ What in the galaxy makes you think I'd want to _kiss_ you?"

This couldn't be happening.

"I never wanted to hurt you."

"And that makes everything else okay? Get away from me! I don’t want to even have to look at you!"

Somehow, he stumbled into the cockpit.

They had connected, in a way he had never dreamed of connecting with anyone, and she hadn't just pushed him away - she'd flung him across the room.

He was teetering on the lip of a bottomless pit and he wanted nothing more than for it to swallow him whole. Was that really how she saw him - nothing more than a murderer, untouchable, evil incarnate?

_Unperson._

_Monster._

Was that all anyone saw?

Was that all he'd let anyone see?

Was that all he'd been allowed to let anyone see?

But he wasn't a bad person. He wasn't a _good_ person, but that went for most of the galaxy. How could he be worse than a spice smuggler? Or even a General who ordered thousands to their deaths?

Why couldn't she see _him?_

He stared out into the cold vastness of space.


	10. Chapter 10

  


It was his need for the fresher that finally drove him from the cockpit.

She was pressed into the corner of the couch, watching him with that same frigid glare. He couldn't bear to look at her.

He couldn't bear to look in the mirror.

_Monster._

_Enough._ She might think she could shake his foundations and tear him down, but she was wrong. About that, about him, about what was between them.

He felt her watching him as he heated a ration pack. He breathed in the calming scent of Gatalentan tea.

He carried a cup to where she was huddled on the couch. She shrank back.

"Rey. You're cold."

"Get away from me!"

He felt that as if she'd put a knife through his chest. But he shouldn't have expected anything else; he knew how stubborn she was.

He left the cup on the floor and sat at the table, facing her. He pushed half the rehydrated stew towards her. Eventually she got up, snatched the food and backed away.

She was still holding that ludicrous screwdriver; he supposed he should be thankful the blaster was safely stowed in the cockpit. But they couldn't keep this up forever.

"Rey, this is ridiculous. You've made your point. There's no need to be quite so nasty about it."

" _You_ are telling me not to be _nasty_? Would you have taken any notice if Dasha had said that to you?"

He frowned. "Who or what in the galaxy is Dasha?"

"She. She was in Tuanul."

The word meant nothing to him.

Her mouth twisted. "You slaughtered an entire village and you didn't even know its _name_? If I'd been there that night you'd have cut me down with the rest of them. So don't try to pretend you care what I think now."

He remembered it now. Flames in the darkness. A primitive place full of primitive fools who worshipped the light without ever having touched the Force.

"If you'd been there, I'd have known," he said. "I'd never have let anyone harm you."

She was shaking her head. "Can't you even see that makes it worse?"

"Why should it? The galaxy is full of violence. Every day, people make decisions and every day those decisions mean other people live or die. Do you condemn everyone who protects the people they care about? Or just me?"

"You don't care about me."

He flung his cup away. It clanged against the wall.

He had treated her gently. He had shown her how to make sense of the Force. He had kept her warm. He had opened to her in a way he had never opened to anyone before. And she thought he didn't _care?_

"You're wrong." He pushed himself up from the table, gripping the edge as if his hands could crush it and her contempt along with it. "You just refuse to see anything beyond your own prejudices. You've been attacking me from the instant you saw me. But you're like me. You've seen it. You've _felt_ it."

"I am nothing like you! Don't blame me for your delusions!

Delusions? He would show her delusions!

He advanced on her. She brandished her screwdriver. He froze her in place and tore it from her grasp. It stuck in a locker door, quivering.

He twisted his hand in her hair, forced her to look up at him. There was fear in her eyes, fear and fury like there'd been when he'd first seen her on Takodana. But so much deeper, now that she _knew_ what he was capable of.

He felt her anger flare.

His own rose in response. He spoke quietly, but with all the menace he'd spared her before. "Why did you really bring me back from Starkiller, Rey? Why did you come to visit me? Why did you reach for me in the Force? _Stop lying to yourself!_ " 

She was shaking with the effort to free herself. But she couldn't, of course she couldn't, she didn't know how, and _still_ she thought she didn't need him. He'd felt her loneliness, he _understood_ her, he'd wanted to show her how to use her strength so she could stand beside him and they'd never have to be lonely again. And she'd _pushed him away._

He stepped close, letting go of her hair and cradling her cheek. 

She burned with rage, humiliation, disgust. She wanted to _move_ , to hurt him, to run. But he didn't let her move a muscle. He hadn't brought her with him to make her weak. 

"You think you're fighting me," he said. "But you're not. You've been alone for so long that you're scared to let anyone in." 

He drew his hand down to her neck. Her pulse jumped under his thumb. Her psychic shudder rippled through them both. 

And he could feel her sudden fear, her horror of how he could have his revenge for all the ways she'd humiliated him. 

_You know I can take whatever I want._

He recoiled. That was not the union he yearned for.

He let his hand drop. "Is that the monster you're afraid of, Rey? Because it isn't me."

He turned back to the cockpit, smashing his fist against the bulkhead as he entered. She strained against his hold on her.

He waited. She was angry enough now. He could feel her clawing at his mind, trying to force him to _let. her. go._

He was adjusting the scanner when his whole body cramped. 

_Oh, very good._

She wasn't being gentle. But nor was she holding him securely. He sank his awareness into his muscles, diving deeper than her grip, and slowly prised her away. He stretched, sat back in the auxiliary seat and eased his hold on her.

Ten minutes later she stormed into the cockpit. "Don't you-"

He flung out his hand and she went rigid. He mirrored her furious glare. "Do you still think you have nothing to learn from me?"

This time, it only took her five minutes to break free.

"Again." 

Four minutes. But she was exhausted by the effort; she reeled against the pilot's seat. "If you-"

He froze her again; this time he want deeper, capturing her nerves, her cells, her _thoughts_. Let her see what power she was so foolishly setting herself against! All she could do was hate him for it.

And that was fine; he had hated Luke at times. He'd even hated Snoke. If a student never hated her teacher, she wasn't being challenged.

He left her there and went to pick up his cup. He didn't refill it; he'd had more of that kriffing tea than he needed in a lifetime. He didn't need calm. He needed to feel the _anger_.

He lay back on the couch and let all of it flood him: that inexplicable need to protect her, her wild strength in the forest, the weight of her head on his shoulder, her delight in using the skills he'd taught her. That moment they had been one, his bewilderment when she denied it, the humiliation her contempt had carved into him. And the burning anger that for all his power, she could make him feel this way.

Could she feel it, through his grip on her mind? Would a savage like her even care?

He released her. Her chair creaked. She didn't come out.

So she wouldn't even look at him. That hurt. But he knew what to do with pain: dissolve it in anger and pour it into the Force.

_Through passion, I gain strength._

His master would be proud.

And he was slammed by a tidal wave of betrayal.

Snoke _knew._ _This_ is what his master had expected when he cut him off.

He shouldn't have been surprised; this was hardly the first time Snoke had made him suffer. But he hadn't ever imagined a hurt like _this_.

He didn't want to feel it. He wanted the pain to end.

But he would bear it, as he had borne everything else. It would make him strong.

_The Supreme Leader is wise._

_The Supreme Leader is wise._

At least this meant he wouldn't have to kill her. That wouldn't stop the pain, only the hope. And the hope made the pain cut all the deeper. His master would approve of that.

He lay there until the cabin lights dimmed. She appeared in the doorway.

He sat up.

"Don't." Her voice was quiet but determined.

"Don't what?"

"Whatever you were about to do."

"I wasn't-"

"Just don't," she said again. "You keep saying you don't mean to hurt me, but you always do."

 _Hurt._ She had no idea.

She shook her head. "It's so easy for you, isn't it? You just wave your hand and make people do whatever you want. Do you know how it feels to be on the other end of that? Do you even care?"

"Of course I know." He met her gaze, held it. "What you think I've done to you is _nothing._ "

Perhaps she could see the truth of that in his eyes, how his master had shown him all the ways he could break so he could learn all the ways to not be broken. Perhaps she could understand that he was showing her how to find her strength.

Perhaps she was just weary of arguing.

She grabbed an armful of blankets and headed for the door at the back of the cabin.

He stood, blocking her path. "Where are you going?"

"To sleep."

"No you won't. You'll freeze back there."

"I turned the heat up."

"Well, you can turn it down again. We agreed to stay in front to save fuel."

She eyed the screwdriver, still stuck in the locker door. "I'd rather die."

"Well, I'd rather you didn't." He curled his fingers. She slumped to the floor.

He pulled away her blankets and picked her up. In the low gravity of the ship, she was lighter in his arms than she had been when he'd carried her out of the woods. Even then, he hadn't wanted to let her go.

This time it was different. This time he knew what she was.

He laid her on the couch and pulled a blanket around her. He tucked another around her feet.

He brushed a stray hair from her cheek. He remembered the weight of her head on his shoulder, the warmth of her as she slept against him.

He let the longing slice into him. He let it clear his head.

He pulled a third blanket over her and returned to the cockpit.

The scanner was chiming.

Somewhere out there was another ship. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank-you again to everyone who has read, kudoed or commented. I hope you don't all hate me for this!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank-you, much-valued commenters, for being reassuring about my insecurity last chapter.
> 
> In this one, Kylo demonstrates the power of the dark side. There will be blood.
> 
> * * *

  


_Come on_ , he thought. _Look at this shiny bauble of a ship. You know you want to take it._

"Let me see."

She was standing in the doorway, carefully keeping her distance. He stood aside to let her peer at the scanner.

They'd been watching the other ship approach for hours. Like them, it wasn't broadcasting an ident, but it was close enough now for a mass reading.

She tapped the readout. "Light freighter? Who do you think it is?"

"It's not First Order. I don't think it's Resistance. It's a bit bigger than most bounty hunters, but that's not impossible. Could be smugglers. Could be traders."

 _Could be pirates,_ he did not say aloud. They'd find out soon enough.

"Traders might have the parts we need."

"Doesn't matter." He glanced at her. "We aren't going to barter with them. We're going to kill them and take their ship."

"No." She turned away. "That’s- No way. You're not making me into a murderer."

He caught her arm and swung her to face him. "Look," he said. "This isn't like on Jakku where the double-crossers get a reputation and you can refuse to deal with them later. We could ask them nicely to trade, wait for them to try to take this ship and _then_ kill them, or we can just save time."

She shook off his hand. "We'll ask. If you're right, at least that'll give us time to see what we're facing."

He nodded. But he had a strong feeling this was going to end in a fight. He _needed_ a fight. And he didn't want it to be with her.

It was Rey who hailed the other ship. She grudgingly admitted that her voice was less threatening than his, while he grudgingly admitted that she knew more about electronic components than he did.

The voice that responded sounded human and vaguely female, but was unmistakably vocoded. It claimed to have the parts they needed. It was happy to accept a vastly inflated sum of credits in return. It invited them to dock.

Rey cut the connection. "Well?"

"It's not a common part, is it? Seems unlikely they'd have it."

Actually, the very presence of the ship was unlikely. He wondered whether the First Order had traced his signal after all and his master had sent the ship as a further test. Not that it would matter in the end.

"How many on board?" he asked.

"Judging by the size of the ship, maybe four to six? I didn't exactly have a plausible reason to ask."

He raised an eyebrow. "And judging by the Force?"

She coloured, and closed her eyes for a moment. "Five."

"Agreed." He retrieved the blaster from its locker and checked the charge. "I assume you can manage the docking procedure? I'll go back to the airlock."

She nodded. "I won't be far behind you."

"No. You should stay here. "

"What? No way! I can handle myself!"

"Good." He handed over the blaster. "If any of them get past me, don’t let them get any further."

"You're going in there without a blaster?"

He shrugged. "It's not really my weapon of choice. And we only have the one."

He went aft.

The airlock cycled green. The door slid open.

There was a single figure in the corridor beyond; a Pantoran female, unarmoured but with a blaster at her side. She stared at his bare feet and baggy clothes in astonishment.

"You have the credits?"

He supposed her doubt was understandable. "Of course. But I'd like to see the parts first."

"No." She put her hand on her blaster. "You will bring me the credits first."

He smiled. If she wanted to play _that_ game…

His hand moved. "No. _You_ will bring _me_ the parts."

Her face slackened. "I will bring you the parts." She retreated behind a blast door.

It only took a minute for a furious argument to erupt on the other side. When the door opened again, two humans in battered Mandalorian armour stepped through. They were dwarfed by the brutish Dowutin following them. Each of the three carried a heavily modded blaster.

He could feel their scorn and he hated them for it. He let the anger rise. He didn't need to _look_ now to know the flow of the Force - it moved through him like a river of lava. 

"I didn't think it would take three people to carry a few capacitors and a navchip board," he said nonchalantly.

The figure on the left raised his blaster. "We don't believe you have the credits. But we'll search your ship to be sure."

"I can't let you do that."

A derisive laugh. "Who's going to stop us? You?"

He didn't dignify that with an answer. They thought him nothing and it was the last mistake they would ever make.

The man fired.

He flung out his hand; the energy bolt quivered in place. All three of them froze. 

He stalked towards them. "You shouldn't have done that. You could have damaged my ship." 

He felt their pain, their shock, their uncomprehending terror. He pulled the blaster from the man's unresisting fingers and flung it away. This one could live, for a few minutes longer. The other two he had no use for.

It was so easy to coil his power around the other human's throat and _squeeze._ A few seconds of agonised gasping to spike the first man's fear, and his victim fell. The Force seethed towards the Dowutin, its bulk as nothing in the face of his fury. The corridor shuddered as the creature crashed to the floor. 

He carefully removed the helmet of the one left standing. His blond hair was plastered to his scalp; his pale eyes glittered with fear. 

Kylo Ren smiled. "Tell me about the rest of the crew."

He loosened his hold on the man's tongue. What came out was a string of garbled defiance.

Screw asking! He reached out his hand and _took._

He smashed through the man's puny defences and sliced away layer after layer of clutter to find the stale corridors of the ship; he followed them through the twists and turns of his victim's mind until he had everything he wanted to know. By the time he was done, a trail of drool and blood oozed down the man's chin.

He flung the man onto the hovering blaster bolt and smashed his head against the wall for good measure.

Three down. It was as if cutting away the man's sanity had cut away his own confusion with it. He knew his way now.

The blast door opened easily with the code he'd ripped from the man's mind.

Something hurtled towards him. He stopped the projectile with a thought. A knife clattered to the floor. He called it to him.

The thrower was the Pantoran. He _reached_ for her and flung her down at his feet. He gripped the knife as her panic thickened between them. He slashed through it into her throat.

Four.

He wiped the blood from his eyes.

The last of them would be in the cockpit. He wondered if they had any idea what was coming for them, if they realized how wrong they'd been to see him as _prey._ For that alone they had to die.

He padded forwards. Bloody footprints marked his path.

He could sense the last of them now, crouching inside the cockpit door in a futile attempt at ambush.

The cockpit door slid open. He yanked the creature into view and threw it backwards. Something cracked.

He walked into the cockpit. Across the console lay a Twi'lek male: blue-skinned, heavily scarred and with a newly unnatural angle to its right leg.

"What the-" A blaster appeared in its hand. "Who in the three moons are you?"

"Your worst nightmare."

The Twi'lek's hand twitched - and went rigid. Foolish of it, to go for a blaster when he could so easily reach out and choke the air from its throat.

Too easily.

He held the Twi'lek still as he approached. He ran his fingers over one of the creature's lekku: smooth, warm, tingling with nervous energy. The appendage twitched at his touch. He crushed it.

The Twi'lek screamed.

He let the screaming fill him: it was all he could hear, all he could feel, as if the Twi'lek was giving voice to all of his pain and all of his rage. He plunged into its depths and let it wash away his humiliation.

The screaming faded to a whimper, and silence.

Five.

He should have been tired, but felt only a fierce satisfaction.

There was a sound from the corridor outside. He whirled round and jerked the last of them off his feet.

Si-

He stopped himself just in time.

"Rey."

He stood over her, watched her take in his blood-spattered feet and his blood-spattered clothes and the scar she'd slashed across his face. He felt her brush his mind as she traced the less visible wounds she'd carved into him. 

_Yes, Rey. Are you proud of the monster you made?_

He couldn't stand the fear in her eyes. Couldn't think about what might have happened if…

He had _told_ her to stay out of this. It wasn't his fault she'd followed him and seen what he'd tried to spare her. She'd never want anything to do with him now.

It was too much. He needed to be away from her.

He slammed up his shields. His own pain was enough; he didn't need her to keep _feeding_ it.

"There's a storeroom below," he told her. "I think you'll find the parts you need there."

"But… I thought you wanted to take this ship."

He turned away. "I am taking it. You're not. I'll get you a position fix but I want to be out of here within the hour."

He knew he couldn't go through with that, knew he'd be drawn back to check on her. But he'd give her that chance to get away and save them both.

He heard her scramble to her feet. "What? You can't leave me here!"

Something twisted inside him, something dangerously close to hope. He squashed it. Scared and lonely and clinging to the only living human being for parsecs didn't mean she wanted to be with _him_.

"I thought you wanted me gone," he said.

"I'm coming with you."

He turned back to her, caught her gaze and held it. "Do you really mean that, Rey? I thought you didn't want to go anywhere I wanted to go."

"You aren't going to leave me here," she said. "You're going to take me with you, and you're going to drop me on a neutral planet."

For a moment he wondered if she were trying to use the mind-trick on him. But he was too tightly shielded for that: that he would do as she asked was just the truth. And somehow she knew it.

Perhaps she saw something more than a monster after all. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the end. Thank-you so much for following this story, especially those of you who have shared your thoughts as we've gone along. I hope the last chapterette... fits.

  


He was silent during the descent.

He was aware of every vibration on the ship; every shift in the air currents outside. He compensated for each of them instantly, all of his attention on making the landing perfectly smooth and _none_ of it on her.

He hadn't intended to watch her leave the ship, but he couldn't stay away. He would feel this completely, and twist the knife for good measure. And his master would be proud.

She was standing by the ramp, shifting from foot to foot. She gave him a half-smile as he approached.

He dug his nails into his palm. He would not let her make a fool of him.

Her smile faltered. But she put a hand on his arm. "Ren. I have to say this."

 _So say it._ He shook off her hand.

"I did feel something, when we were meditating. But it's not what you thought… it _can't_ be, not with you. You're, you're…" She gestured with her hand as if it would conjure the right word from the depths of the ship.

"A monster."

"Yes. No. I-"

"Get out."

She stared, as if he had slapped her.

How dare she? How dare _she_ be upset when she'd just made that prepared speech about how she could never accept him?

_"Get. Out."_

Because he was _this close_ to dragging her back on board and taking her far away across the galaxy until he could prove to her how wrong she was.

"Fine." She slung her bag over her shoulder. "I just wanted to… Oh, forget it."

_Just GO._

He grabbed onto a strut and squeezed, hard.

She looked at him one last time. "I hate you."

I _know._

He watched her walk down the ramp without a backward glance. He watched as she faded into the crowd, the bright bloom of her presence fading to an ache at the back of his mind.

The next time he saw her, she'd be running at him with a saber trying to wipe the stain of him from the galaxy.

Or maybe the next time he saw her she'd have learned to understand her own darkness and the value of what he could teach her.

Or maybe, he'd never see her again at all.

But he would be waiting.

And while he was waiting, the _wanting_ would make him invincible.

  


  



End file.
